Traveler Sues Over Bloody Balls • Herpes Vaccine In The Works

• A Canadian judge has ruled against a man who sued Air Transat after a flight attendant refused to examine his balls. The unhappy passenger was bleeding, but the (male) attendant opted not to look at his junk. •

• Researchers have found that women report feeling guilty far more often than men and some believe that this is a genetic fact, rather than a product of socialization. Neuroscientist Simon Baron-Cohen (cousin of Sacha) explains: “The female brain is predominately hard-wired for empathy. The male brain is predominately hard-wired for understanding and building systems.” How should we solve this problem? By making men more like women, argues the authors of the study. • Scientists from the Queensland Institute of Medical Research have found a link between period pain and risk of endometriosis. Girls who start their periods before age 14 and experience high levels of pain during menstruation are more likely to develop the disease later in life. • Bankers in the UK are having trouble paying their alimony, says lawyers. Lawyers from several firms report seeing an increasing number of clients who can’t meet their commitments, and are looking to renegotiate the divorce settlement. • Marion Jones, the former sprinter who lost her career when she admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs, is making a comeback as a W.N.B.A. player. She hopes that this will give her a new life as an athlete. The W.N.B.A. is happy to have the “global figure” involved with the league, but not that happy – they’re paying her the first-year minimum of $35,000. • The anti-abortion group Personhood has decided to go on spring break. Sadly, they’re not going to be doing tequila shots with the rest of the revelers. They will be too busy driving around “truth trucks” covered with images of fetuses and aborted babies to make it to the bars. • Robert Epstein, contributing editor for Scientific American Mind spoke yesterday about arranged marriages: “love in the love marriages starts out very high. And then over time it decreases. That’s what all of our studies show. And in the arranged marriages-and this is true in my work too-we see the love starting out relatively low… And then it increases gradually, surpasses the love in the love marriages at about five years. And 10 years out it’s twice as strong.” Something to think about. • The 2010 Buyer’s Guide edition of Bicycling magazine includes a “bonus” section for women. As Sociological Images points out, this means the mag is normally for men. • On April 5th, Dottie Metcalf-Lindenburger will head for the International Space Station as part of the crew of STS-131. She says she’s looking forward to the trip, but hears that liftoff is a “kick in the pants.” • Also proving that women in science are awesome is Diana Patterson, the first woman to run an Australian Antarctic Station. Retirement has given Patterson the chance to tell her story in the recently published biography The Ice Beneath My Feet, My Year In Antarctica. Surprisingly, when asked about the most frightening part of the experience, she talks about a bad haircut. • Scientists may be one step closer to developing a herpes vaccine. Researchers at BioVex have produced a vaccine that has been effective in animals, and they will soon begin clinical trials of the vaccine in London. • Any article titled “Why women are such bad networkers” is bound to be full of questionable generalizations. And it is! For example: “women don’t attach as much importance to networking. Women do their jobs in a quiet professional manner and don’t tell everybody what a good job they are doing.” • In March 2003, Rachel Corrie was crushed to death beneath a pile of rubble by an advancing Israeli army bulldozer. Yesterday, witnesses described the peace activist’s final moments in court as part of a civil action brought by her parents against the military to challenge their account of her death. • Sarah Palin will to testify next month in the case against University of Tennessee student David Kernell, who has been accused of illegally accessing her email account and stealing her identity in attempts to cover up his crimes. • Hundreds of Nigerian women came together in several cities across the nation to protest the killing of at least 109 people in ethnic clashes near Jos on Sunday. Most of the victims were Christians, and witnesses say most of the perpetrators came from the Muslim Fulani group. Protesters carried signs that read “Stop killing our future; Bloodshed in the Plateau must stop.” • A new study found that kids who watch R-rated movies are more likely to try alcohol as teens. Kids who seek out R movies, listen to loud music, and enjoy scary things are classified as “high sensation seeking adolescents.” Researchers suggest that parents “take movie ratings literally” and keep kids under 17 from seeing anything over PG-13. • Also in kids today: inhalants are more popular with American 12-year-olds than weed, cocaine, and hallucinogens combined, perhaps because they “are legal, they’re easy to get, they’re laying around the home and it’s easy for kids to buy them.” • Collector Charles L. Blockson has donated 39 artifacts from the life of Harriet Tubman, including her knife and fork, her hymnal, and one of the few surviving photos of her, to the National Museum of African American History and Culture. • Former Planned Parenthood of Rhode Island executive director Mary Sorrentino says of Angie Jackson’s live-tweeted abortion, “many of us who have spent our lives on the front lives of the abortion debate also have the right to hate the fact that she chose to do this.” But Feministing calls Sorrentino’s piece “an argument for silence, for stigma, and for an appropriate way of being a lady.” • A new wrinkle making the Amanda Knox case even more confusing: Rudy Hermann Guede, the man also convicted of the murder for which Knox and her boyfriend are currently imprisoned, has written a letter directly accusing them and denying earlier reports that he said they weren’t involved. • L’Oréal Professionnel is claiming its new ammonia-free hair dye is a game-changer on a par with DVDs or GPS. We hope to soon be able to watch Good Hair on our hair. • Of all UK women, the Welsh are apparently the most likely to get plastic surgery — but plastic surgeon Dean Boyce generously comments, “I don’t think it’s because they are worse-looking.” • A new exhibit on display at the Quai Branly museum in Paris will feature sculptures and ceramics from Peru depicting “sexual acts of an explicit nature.” • The show is titled “Sex, death and sacrifice in the Moche religion.” It includes several images of violent sex, but relatively few ceramics showing vaginal intercourse, because that is “usually performed by a supernatural being called Wrinkle Face.” •